When does company culture break? with Greg Scown (TextExpander)

Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased

What happens when your company outgrows the culture that once defined it?
In this episode of the MarsBased Podcast, Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit sits down with Greg from TextExpander to discuss how growing to 30+ employees forced them to revisit their values, communication style, and internal training.

Greg explains how to recognize the right moment to redefine your company culture and why they decided to introduce internal training programs to support that shift. He shares how seemingly simple tools, like their cultural mantra “Be Obvious”, played a powerful role in improving team communication. The conversation also explores how remote companies can foster stronger ownership and alignment across teams, and what actually makes a training program worth the investment.

Greg also opens up about how they involved the entire team in redefining values, brought in external coaches to support the process, and measured the cultural impact over time. Skipping this process, he says, could have been their most expensive mistake.

Whether you're scaling a remote team or wondering how to make culture actionable, not just aspirational, this episode is packed with real talk and practical insights.

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🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/

Chapters

1. Episode Introduction with Greg Scown (00:00:00)

2. Defining Company Culture at Key Milestones (00:04:29)

3. Communication Training for Remote Teams (00:09:05)

4. Implementing Values Through Hiring Practices (00:16:48)

5. Addressing Remote Work Communication Challenges (00:21:21)

6. Onboarding Processes and Culture Integration (00:30:02)

7. Creating Decision-Making Autonomy in Teams (00:42:50)

8. The ROI of Strong Company Culture (00:50:27)